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A rude surprise could be in store for the millions of Americans who get health coverage through the Affordable Care Act. If Congress doesn’t act next year, enhanced premium subsidies will expire by December, causing enrollees’ payments to increase by more than 75% on average. (12/20)

I suppose it is good news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he supports polio vaccination. But only in comparison to the alternative, like finding out that your cancer is “only” Stage 3. (Megan McArdle, 12/19)

This fall, the National Health and Nutrition Examination reported that the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults declined from 41.9 percent to 40.3 percent in its latest sample of several thousand individuals. “Obesity prevalence is potentially plateauing in the United States,” one CDC official told The Washington Post. “We may have passed peak obesity,” the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch wrote of the news. (Derek Thompson, 12/19)

On Nov. 18, a female pediatric patient participating in a clinical trial suffered a systemic hyperinflammatory syndrome and died about two weeks after receiving a gene therapy. Her death comes as both a setback for GT and a warning about managing future research. It is time to put the sharing of information among research teams ahead of the current prioritization of secrecy for commercial purposes. (Rafael Escandon and Arthur L. Caplan, 12/20)

The dragonflies swarmed in pairs above our heads, a hawk dropped in the distance, and the glass-like water sliced open with each slow stroke of our arms. Swimming beside me was my father. Once a powerfully large and imposing figure, his arms and legs had become shriveled and his body gaunt. My attention to the slow unfolding of a late summers’ day continued to swing back to him. Was the water shallow enough for him to stand if needed? Was his increased weakness causing him to pause or was it a new gauze of confusion? (Katherine Gergen Barnett, 12/19)